


Sky-Island

by Aerileah



Series: The Bracken Trails [1]
Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Fern Survived, Gen, Inspired by Shycraft's You and Me Alone Together, Overprotective Big Brother, Overprotective little sister, Raksura AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26334454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerileah/pseuds/Aerileah
Summary: Moon's sister, Fern, survives the Tath attack. This changes nothing, and everything, about the course of their lives.Fern and Moon had been thrown out of a lot of groundling settlements and camps over the turns, but no matter how many times it happened it was always a painful surprise. Not because it happened, but because each time was so unpredictable. Fern kept a wary eye for the day it was going to happen with the Cordans.
Series: The Bracken Trails [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913620
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34





	1. The Cordans

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You and Me, Alone Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842773) by [Shycraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shycraft/pseuds/Shycraft). 



> Moon is protective of his baby sister. Perhaps a little OVERprotective. 
> 
> This work was inspired by Shycraft's "You and Me, Alone Together," a fic that imagines a "world where Moon wasn't the only survivor of the Tath attack." I was captivated by the idea of Moon growing up with a sister and decided to start from the very beginning of The Cloud Roads to see how Fern would change the story. This work is incomplete and thus far remains very close to the plot of The Cloud Roads. My hope is that Fern's impetuousness demands a change in plot, but we'll see. 
> 
> You will see many instances of scenes and dialogue mirroring or matching the original work by Martha Wells. I admire her work, her writing, and love her characters and world. I am simply along for the ride and excited to see where Fern takes me. All I own is the passion I'm putting into this endeavor.
> 
> Each Work in this Series will correspond to to a chapter from The Cloud Roads, so by the time I finish this fic we'll have 20 Works, each broken up into multiple parts. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3

Fern and Moon had been thrown out of a lot of groundling settlements and camps, but no matter how many times it happened it was always a painful surprise. Not because it happened, but because each time was so unpredictable. Fern kept a wary eye for the day it was going to happen with the Cordans. 

The day started out normal enough. Her brother, Moon, had left at dawn with the other men of the settlement to hunt the vargit, the big flightless birds that roamed this river valley. This part of the Three Worlds was lush and warm. Predators and prey alike roamed the forested hills and valleys. 

Fern stayed close to the settlement with the rest of the women, who all performed various chores and gathered fruits and tubers, as well as vines to weave into baskets. She longingly watched the men leave for their hunt, knowing that Moon would take a vargit to eat for himself and bring another back to the settlement for the elders to portion the meat out to the rest of the members of the camp. 

The settlement abutted a curve of the river with huts, tents and communal spaces crammed on a field that lead to the shallow beach. The rest of the settlement was ringed by a flimsy fence - really, more haphazard stacking and weaving of sticks and vines - than an actual fence. Fern knew the physical structure, and the social structure that placed women in the tents of men to protect and provide for them, were from when the Cordans lived in their walled towns in Kiasper, before it had been taken by the Fell. Discussions to take the fence down and use it for firewood always came to nothing. The position of the women in the settlement was never discussed.

Fern spent the day avoiding Selis and Ilane. She mostly spent her time weaving the baskets that were used in the river to trap fish, and peeling the tough skins off of the melons and tubers that grew in abundance in the area. Selis and Ilane shared a tent with Fern and Moon. Or, rather, Moon “provided” for the three women - Fern, Selis, and Ilane - who shared his tent. That tent was one of the reasons Moon had wanted to seek a place with the Cordans, and at the time - after months and months of being wet, and cold, and hungry, Fern had agreed that to receive use of a tent immediately was an incentive indeed. However, the tent had also come with Selis and Ilane. 

When the Fell had come to Kiasper, many of the Cordans’ men had been killed. Many more of their young men had been killed covering their final escape. The resulting surplus of young women meant that, coupled with their belief that women needed men to provide for them, multiple women were matched up in the same living space as men. Fern knew the idea that women needed men was perfectly absurd. Not only could she take on a grasseater, or even a vargit, she knew multiple women in the camp who were more than capable of chasing a herdbeast down and beating its head in with a club. 

It wasn’t that Fern didn’t like the Cordans, it was just, as with most any place she and Moon lived, it wasn’t a place where both of them fit. Moon fit in fairly well in that the other hunters respected him, and that he felt loved and needed by Ilane. Fern would have been happy for Moon if Ilane didn’t use that control as though she held a string with a fish on the other end of the line. Moon would do anything for anyone who made him feel loved and needed. And although Fern was first on Moon’s list didn’t mean he couldn’t have any number of men or women on that list as well. 

As the day wore on with agonizing slowness, Fern found herself glancing repeatedly at the sky-island drifting above the river valley. It had floated in over the far mountains, growing closing day by day. It was finally close enough she could see the shapes of towers and other buildings long overground by leafy vegetation. She finished two more baskets while squinting at the island and wishing she could strengthen just her eyes to be able to see the details better. 

_Soon_ , she promised herself, _I’ll ask Moon._ Her skin felt restrictive and tight across her bones. As the sun sank low, and the sky turned to muddled pastel shades, Fern returned to the tent with a basket of peeled roots and melons, along with a small selection of berries and nuts. She mutely handed the basket to Selis, who snatched it and pawed through it as though she suspected Fern of handing over only bruised and rotten produce. Fern sat on a grass mat to await Moon’s return. He was running late again - he’d probably taken a midafternoon nap and overslept. Her brother always seemed to need more sleep than her. 

She wished briefly that she could fall asleep, and stay asleep, as easily as he. Lately she’d been having strange nightmares about being cast in the shadow of a great pair of wings and would wake in a clammy sweat in the early hours of the morning. 

***

When Moon finally arrived at their tent, Selis was grouchy and abrasive - at least, more grouchy and abrasive than usual. Ilane snached up a greenroot to peel. Fern had seen this tactic more than once, and mentally began counting up until Moon would reach over and help her peel the pesky vegetable. Nevermind that the coals of the fire were already loaded with several greenroots to bake for their dinner. 

“You took long enough,” Selis snapped, and seized the packet of meat from Moon’s hands. She handed Fern an empty waterskin, who went to fill it at the troughs. By the time she got back, Selis had wrapped the meat in the large oily leaves often used in cooking and settled the meat in the coals. Fern briefly lamented that she hadn't gotten to enjoy any raw meat for months. 

The pale gray-green skin and dull green hair of the Cordans wasn't the only thing that made them different from her and Moon. 

“Moon, do you think the Fell are here?” Ilane asked, her voice soft and hesitant. Moon, who had been scowling at Selis’ back, turned to Ilane and softened his expression. 

A moment later, Ilane's question registered in her mind, and Fern stumbled. She caught herself with a hand on Moon’s shoulder. His expression snapped up to her, his green eyes vibrant and focused. He quietly explained, “Tacras thinks he saw a Fell in the valley.” 

“What?” Fern asked. Her voice sounded very far away to her ears. _But I haven’t smelled them,_ she thought, but thankfully did not say aloud. 

“You haven’t heard?” Selis asked, her voice somehow conveying scorn, disbelief, and pity all at once. 

“The Fell aren’t here,” Moon said. He reached up and squeezed Fern’s wrist. “I’ve been hunting in the open all up and down the valley and I haven’t seen anything. Neither have the others.” Fern knew that when he said he hadn’t seen anything, he meant that he hadn’t scented anything. She tried to relax her fingers. The muscles felt seized in place. 

Selis said, “So Tacras lies because he wants to frighten us to death for his amusement.”

“Probably not,” Moon said. Fern saw the mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Not everyone is like you.” He squeezed her wrist again, and she felt her fingers begin to loosen. 

Fern squeezed his shoulder briefly and he released her. She settled on her mat as Moon reached to help Ilane cut the greenroot she was shredding. Ilane passed him her knife, and they smiled at one another. 

Fern was briefly reminded of the night Moon tried to explain to Ilane that he wouldn’t be able to give her a child, and her stomach clenched. Ilane had been confused, then distraught. The camp had been in a minor tizzy the following week, men and women both gossiping Ilane would leave Moon for Ildras, the chief hunter, and that Fern would take Ilane's place in Moon's bed. Fern suppressed a shudder at that memory. 

Fern decided it _was_ that she didn’t like the Cordans. 

***

The camp never got truly quiet, in the same way that a jungle or a city never got truly quiet. Fern knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep this night. Her head was aching and the image in her mind of huge, shadowy wings coming down on her and Moon felt particularly real in the dim night. She slipped out of the tent and went down to the river, putting her bare feet in the water to try and cool off. Neither she nor Moon wore shoes or foot coverings of any kind. The bottoms of their feet were firm with a heavy callous, and although they had tried shoes in various cities and settlements to try to fit in, they always pulled off the cumbersome things in disgust. 

It wasn’t long after she’d settled on the bank that she heard, and felt, Moon walking up behind her. There was a certain feel to him that she could hear, smell or sense, she didn’t know how, whenever he was near. His tall, lithe form settled silently on the bank next to her and he folded himself into as compact a space as he could manage. His black hair, dark bronze skin, and green eyes looked nothing like her ruddier skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair. She used to wonder if she took after their father. Now she tried not to think about it.

Moon reached out with one arm and she slid into the space along his body. He rested his chin atop her head. Her form, although stockier in build than his, was astonishingly petite in comparison to him. His arm draped around her in a comforting weight.

“The sky-island?” she asked quietly. She spoke in the language they’d been taught by their mother. She felt him nod. 

“You want to come?” he asked in the same language.

“Always,” she said. 

***

They stood and walked along the bank of the river until they reached where the fence ran down toward the edge of the river channel. The fence was flimsy and pathetic at the best of times, and there were gaps at the bottom here where cut it across the slope of the bank. Fern and Moon wiggled under one after another, then they loped together across the field until they reached the fringe of the jungle. Once they were certain they were in the shadows, they shifted. 

Neither of them knew how, or why, they could do this, but each of them had a softskinned form and a scaled form. Moon’s shifted form had wings. When they were younger, just after their mother and three brothers had been killed, Fern tried and tried to shift into a form with wings. Even though she was small and light, her brother had to carry her everywhere, and she had wanted wings of her own. 

When Fern shifted into her other form, she grew a bit stockier and stronger, but didn’t gain any height. Moon grew taller, his shoulders broader, his body stronger yet also lighter. Both of them also grew scales, claws on both hands and feet, a tail, spines and frills that cascaded from their heads like hair, though they could stiffen their spines to fight against a back attack. Moon’s scales were a deep black, with a copper undersheen in the sunlight. Fern’s scales were dark green. In this form, she could easily take a grasseater on, especially if she could drop from a tree above, or if Moon flew with her and dropped her onto its back from above. 

Moon stretched his wings, then looked down at her and raised his spines in anticipation. Fern stepped forward and grasped his collar flange. He wrapped one arm around her waist to her hold her in place and leapt for the sky. 

Fern wasn’t sure why she was different from Moon - or for that matter, why he and their winged mother were so different from her and their three wingless brothers. They weren't even sure what their people were called, only that softskins were terrified of them and they were the only two of their kind they knew of.

Fern closed her eyes as Moon flapped to gain height, tipping her head into the breeze and breathing deeply. Moon didn't make for the sky-island immediately, instead canvassing the length and breadth of the valley in concentric circles. Fern knew he was scouting. She opened her mouth a bit to help catch the scents. She smelled the varied and diverse vegetation of the jungle, the musky and animal scents of the predators and prey animals. No acrid, diseased, gut wrenching Fell stench crossed her nose. She trusted her brother, and trusted him when he’d said he hadn’t seen any evidence of Fell that day, but that irrational prey reflex in the back of her mind was, finally, relaxing its grip on her.

They were ready to explore the sky-island.


	2. The Discovery

Fern's eyes were stronger in her shifted form, and she craned her neck to take a closer look at the sky-island as they flew toward it. Moon soared past it and circled a few times, searching for a good place to land. Her brother's namesake hung high in the sky, and although colors were muted she could clearly see the ruined buildings, overgrown trees, and trailing vines adorning the sky-island. Night blooming flowers dotted the vines in bright splotches. 

Moon spotted a good place to land and began his dive, angling for a balcony that jutted from one of the taller towers. The balcony was overgrown with vines and foliage. Moon landed on the balcony’s railing, his claws gripping the stone securely. Fern dropped from Moon’s arms to the balcony floor, then shifted to her softskinned form. Moon hopped down from the railing and shifted in mid-fall. He reached over Fern and pushed at the vines. Fern ducked into the open space, and Moon followed her through. 

They both still wore their clothes. It was a small bit a magic, a knack, to shift and bring clothes and small belongings along with the change. Fern could shift with a full bag on her back with no ill effects. Moon became short of breath and nauseated if he carried more than a waterskin. Neither of them could shift with shoes on - the shoes would remain in place and their claws would rip out the toes. 

Moonlight snuck through cracks and open spaces in the ceiling above. The room smelled damp, dusty, and like decaying leafy matter. The delicate scent of the vine blossoms wove through the more pungent smells. Moon sneezed loudly, and Fern shot him a horrified look. He shrugged. “We’re the only ones here,” he said. 

Fern moved into the next room, startling a flock of small flighted lizards. They hissed and fluttered away, their brilliant scales shimmering blue and green in the moonlight. Fern looked at Moon with raised eyebrows. “Well, us and the lizards,” Moon amended.

Fern chuckled under her breath, despite herself, and followed Moon as he explored the next few rooms. Once Moon had grown enough to fly with her to great heights, they had sought out these sky-islands and other ruined places to find safe shelter. Over the years, their explorations had become curious ventures to find their people. Since Moon and their mother could fly, it stood to reason that their people had made a home of the sky-islands. They had stopped looking over fifteen turns before. 

Fern sternly pulled her thoughts back to the present. Thinking about the past mistakes did no one any good. Now, they explored as a way to pass the time. Fern knew that they would either never find their people, or they would find them by unexpected happenstance, and it wasn't worth agonizing over which of the two it would be.

Moon stopped in a room with an elaborate mural on one wall, the vines having cracked and damaged parts of the inlay. Fern poked at broken pieces of pottery and shiny glass at the base of one wall while Moon brushed his hand over the mural. Finding some particularly interesting stones and pieces of rounded glass, Fern tucked her favorites into a pocket. She would weave them into a piece of string to tie back her hair. She was getting tired of the dark green stone in her hair tie now. She picked a few more pieces she thought could make into an anklet for Moon. Or, at least, she would give it to Moon if that wouldn’t upset Ilane too much. Ilane had studiously ignored Fern ever since the “Why can’t Moon give me a baby?” incident, except for when she whispered things to others if Fern walked past while she was socializing. 

Fern was startled out of her thoughts when Moon muttered something to himself under his breath. “Hmm?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” he said. 

In the next room, they found a dilapidated cabinet laden with decaying books. Fern squeaked in delight and loaded her arms, and Moon’s arms, with as many packets as they both could carry, and they returned to the larger atrium so they could read in better lighting. They settled in a patch of moonlight, Moon cross legged and Fern sitting in his lap so he could look over her shoulder. The text was dissimilar enough from Altanic that it was difficult to parse, though many pages had elaborate illustrations with delicate color. 

“These are the people from the mural in the other room,” Moon said, touching a slender finger to the image of a person with tentacles where a mouth would normally be. There were several illustrations of the people flying in carriage compartments affixed to the backs of giant birds. 

“Do you think that’s real?” Moon asked, sounding dubious, his finger hovering over the illustration of the birds and their burdens.

“They’d need some way to travel from the surface to the sky-island, or from island to island,” Fern supposed. 

“Seems a little far fetched to me,” Moon opined, turning the page. His hand froze mid-turn, the page suspended upright then sliding from his fingers with the force of gravity. Fern felt his whole body tense as he turned his head to look throughout the atrium. Fern followed his gaze and saw a shadow on a balcony where a shadow didn’t seem to fit. Her breath caught in her throat. She saw claws gripping the stone railing, the long shape of a tail, and then Moon clutched Fern tightly and flung them both through the nearest doorway. 

As Moon scrambled through the debris, Fern twisted in his arms, gripping her legs around his waist and holding tight around his neck to free his arms. He paused briefly to listen, and they both heard the rasp of scales on stone as the creature moved. Moon tapped Fern’s cheek twice with his fingertips. She tucked her head into his chest and nodded. 

Moon bolted back into the inner rooms, his feet sliding as he stepped on the mossy tiles strewn under the murals. Fern felt him clamber up a fallen column or rock pile, she wasn’t sure exactly what, and felt him leap. She thought maybe he was heading for one of the small windows near the ceiling. He shifted mid jump, Fern shifting simultaneously with him, and she pulled her arms away from his neck to grip his collar flange. She felt the cross breeze as they cleared the window, and then the gut wrenching lurch as Moon jerked sharply away from a swipe of large claws. 

_ The thing was waiting for us outside the window, _ Fern thought incredulously as they fell. Tucked into his chest as she was, Fern could do nothing other than hang on. They tumbled, and Moon folded his arms and wings around Fern as they rolled down the angled roof of a tower. Another few gut-wrenching movements through the air, and Moon was abruptly stationary, his claws dug into the underside of something, all of Fern’s weight, slight though it was, pushing them down. 

She knew gripping both hands and feet upside down on stone - on the underside of the sky-island? - like this would hurt. Their claws were made for branches, not stone. Fern peeked under Moon's arm, and saw the creature circle the island below them, its wings briefly illuminated by the light of the moon above. Fern felt her heart climb up into her throat at the sight. She watched the creature fly up above the island, and was completely unprepared when Moon let go. 

“Brace yourself,” he whispered. And then they fell.


	3. The Dive

As they fell away from the sky-island, Moon turned his body so he could angle them toward the river. Her body now flipped to face upward, Fern had a perfect view over Moon’s shoulder and through his frills. The creature appeared again, clearing the obstruction of the sky-island, and it dove for them. 

Fern would have screamed if she could have channeled any energy from her thundering heart to her voice. She managed to lift one hand up from Moon’s collar flange to tap him repeatedly on his neck. She lost count of the number of frantic taps, then gripped Moon's shoulder again and braced herself. He arrowed downward even more and they continued their headlong dive. She knew he was aiming for the river. She felt him begin to cup his wings to slow their descent, and she took a deep breath. Then Moon spun so that his back would hit the water first. The splash was a shock to her system, and Fern focused on holding her breath.

Moon spun again once they were underwater, kicking and pushing them down with his wings and tail until they scraped the bottom. They stayed close to the sandy bottom, surfacing for air in the thick stands of reeds when Fern tapped Moon’s cheek to tell him she needed to breathe. His lungs were so much bigger than hers. They surfaced with only their mouths and noses above the water, then Moon pulled them both down again and swam further. Fern didn’t know if the thing chasing them was a scent hunter, but she knew for certain she didn’t want it seeing where they ended up. Once they were back to the camp, they carefully shifted to their softskinned forms underwater, and waded their way up the bank. 

Moon sat down, hard, on the sparse grass above the water, and Fern sat with him. She was shivering and shaking, even though the night was warm. The swim would have been a pleasant relief on any other night. Moon drew her into his arms. 

“It must have been sleeping when we got there, or we would have heard it moving around,” he said. His head was tipped up to the sky above as he looked to see if the creature had followed them. "I saw it give up and turn back at that bend in the river with the flurryblooms," he added.

“We were almost dinner,” Fern gasped. 

“And we owe Tacras an apology.” 

Fern sat back and looked Moon in the face. “But it wasn’t a Fell. It didn’t smell at all like Fell, and I didn’t see a crest on its head.” 

“Even so, it’s dangerous, and we have to warn the others.” Moon chewed on his lower lip. “We can’t exactly go running through the camp shouting a warning. Maybe I should come back early from hunting tomorrow and say I saw it then.” 

Fern’s brow furrowed. “You can’t possibly go hunting tomorrow.” 

“Why not?”

Fern nearly hissed her frustration at him. “Because that,” she waved at the sky in eloquent horror, “is still out there.” 

“We don’t have much choice,” Moon sighed. “I’m not _not_ warning them.” 

“I know,” Fern said. They sat in silence for a while, the slow movement of the river a soothing noise to their abraded nerves. 

“Let’s go back to bed,” Moon suggested. 

“You think I’m going to be able to sleep. After _that_?” 

Moon stood, helped Fern up, and ruffled her hair. She batted his hand away and pulled her hair tie from the wet tangles. She wished she hadn't lost her good comb when they'd been chased out of that nice silk-weaving town to the north.

***

Fern saw Ilane at the glowing coals of their cooking fire as they approached the tent. Moon halted abruptly beside her and she grabbed his wrist and pulled him along. “Don’t make her suspicious,” she hissed. Moon must not have seen Ilane right away, because once he focused on her, he relaxed. 

“Sorry I woke you,” Moon said, and sat down next to Ilane. “I went down to the river. Fern was already down there trying to cool off.” 

Fern looked at their dripping clothes and rubbed a hand over her face. 

Ilane shook her head, “I couldn’t sleep.” 

Fern made to walk past them both into the tent. She wanted to change into her other set of clean, dry clothes. 

Ilane lifted a small kettle off the fire and gestured at Fern. She looked up, her wide brown eyes making contact with Fern’s blue eyes. “I’m making tisane. Do you want some?” 

Fern froze, feeling a little like a small mammal watching a stooping predator. Moon cleared his throat quietly. Fern knew he wanted her and Ilane to get along, and this was the first time Ilane had directly spoken to her in weeks. “Sure,” she said, and sat down. 

Selis poked her head out of the tent to scold them for waking her up, then vanished again. Fern politely sipped the tisane, trying not to grimace at the grassy-weed taste. She missed the good, strong tea that she and Moon used have when they lived with the Jandin, who lived in cliff caves above a waterfall. Ilane chattered away with gossip about the love affairs of pretty much everyone else in the camp. Fern didn’t find it nearly as interesting as Ilane or Moon did, though she thought he was thinking of how to approach the subject of the flying predator with the chief hunter. He was good at pretending to listen attentively.

Fern thought about the dreams she'd been having of her and Moon being cast in the shadow of a great pair of wings. She didn’t remember falling asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Memory of Sneaks
> 
> Our floofy dudeman went across the Rainbow Bridge this week. May he have endless catnip to nibble on and unlimited sunlight to nap in.


End file.
